his head. ‘We are humbled, Ulshun Pral. We are shamed by these two strangers. You are the Bentract. As were we, once, long ago. We now choose to remember. We now choose to fight in your name. In our deaths there will be naught but honour, this we vow.’ He then rose and faced Rud Elalle. ‘Soletaken, will you accept us as your soldiers?’
As soldiers? No. As friends, as Bentract, yes.’
The three T’lan bowed to him.
All of this passed in a blur before Trull Sengar’s eyes. Since Onrack the Broken’s admission, it seemed as if Trull’s entire world had, with grinding, stone-crushing irresistibility, turned on some vast, unimagined axis-yet he was drawn round again by a hand on his shoulder, and Onrack, now standing before him.
‘There is no need,’ the Imass warrior said. ‘I know something even Rud Elalle does not, and I tell you this, Trull Sengar, there is no need. Not for grief. Nor regret. My friend, listen to me. This world will not die.’
And Trull found no will within him to challenge that assertion, to drive doubt into his friend’s earnest gaze. After a moment, then, he simply sighed and nodded. ‘So be it, Onrack.’
‘And, if we are careful,’ Onrack continued, ‘neither shall we.’
‘As you say, friend.’
Thirty paces away in the darkness, Hedge turned to Quick Ben and hissed, ‘What do you make of all that, wizard?’
Quick Ben shrugged. ‘Seems the confrontation has been averted, if Hostille Rator’s kneeling before Ulshun Pral didn’t involve picking up a dropped fang or something.’
‘A dropped-what?’
‘Never mind. That’s not the point at all, anyway. But I now know I am right in one thing and don’t ask me how I know. I just do. Suspicion into certainty.’
‘Well, go on, damn you.’
‘Just this, Hedge. The Finnest. Of Scabandari Bloodeye. It’s here.’
‘Here? What do you mean, here?’
‘Here, sapper. Right here.’
The gate was a shattered mess on one side. The huge cyclopean stones that had once formed an enormous arch easily five storeys high had the appearance of having been blasted apart by multiple impacts, flinging some of the shaped blocks a hundred paces or more from the entrance-way. The platform the arch had once spanned was heaved and buckled as if some earthquake had rippled through the solid bedrock beneath the pavestones. “The other side was dominated by a tower of still standing blocks, corkscrew-twisted and seemingly precariously balanced.
The illusion of bright daylight had held during this last part of the journey, as much by the belligerent insistence of Udinaas as by the amused indulgence of Clip. Or, perhaps, Silchas Ruin’s impatience. The foremost consequence of this was that Seren Pedac was exhausted-and Udinaas looked no better. Like the two Tiste Andii, however, Kettle seemed impervious-with all the boundless energy of a child, Seren supposed, raising the possibility that at some moment not too far off she would simply collapse.
Seren could see that Fear Sengar was weary as well, but probably that had more to do with the unpleasant burden settling ever more heavily upon his shoulders. She had been harsh and unforgiving of herself in relating to the Tiste Edur the terrible crime she had committed upon Udinaas, and she had done so in the hope that Fear Sengar would-with a look of unfeigned and most deserving disgust in his eyes-choose to reject her, and his own vow to guard her life.
But the fool had instead held to that vow, although she could see the brutal awakening of regret. He would not-could not-break his word.
It was getting easier to disdain these bold gestures, the severity so readily embraced by males of any species. Some primitive holdover, she reasoned, of the time when possessing a woman meant survival, not of anything so prosaic as one’s own bloodline, but possession in the manner of ownership, and survival in the sense of power. There had been backward tribes all along the fringe territories of the Letherii kingdom where such archaic notions were practised, and not always situations where men were the owners and wielders of power-for sometimes it was the women. In either case, history had shown that such systems could only survive in isolation, and only among peoples for whom magic had stagnated into a chaotic web of proscriptions, taboos and the artifice of nonsensical rules-where the power offered by sorcery had been usurped by profane ambitions and the imperatives of social control.
Contrary to Hull Beddict’s romantic notions of such peo-
pie, Seren Pedac had come to feel little remorse when she thought about their inevitable and often bloody extinction. Control was ever an illusion, and its maintenance could only persist when in isolation. Not to say, of course, that the Letherii system was one of unfettered freedom and the liberty of individual will. Hardly. One imposition had been replaced by another. But at the very least it’s not one divided by gender.
The Tiste Edur were different. Their notions… primitive. Offer a sword, bury it at the threshold of one’s home, the symbolic exchange of vows so archaic no words were even necessary. In such a ritual, no negotiation was possible, and if marriage did not involve negotiation then it was not marriage. No, just mutual ownership. Or not- so-mutual ownership. Such a thing deserved little respect.
And now, here, it was not even a prospective husband laying claim to her life, but that prospective husband’s damned brother. And, to make the entire situation yet more absurd, the prospective husband was dead. Fear will defend to the death my right to marry a corpse. Or, rather, the corpse’s right to claim me. Well, that is madness and I will not-1 do not-accept it. Not for a moment.
Yes, I have moved past self-pity. Now I’m just angry.
Because he refused to let his disgust dissuade him.
For all her notions of defiance, that last thought stung her.
Udinaas had moved past her to study the ruined gate, and now he turned to Clip. ‘Well, does it yet live?’
The Tiste Andii’s chain and rings were spinning from one finger again, and he offered the Letherii slave a cool smile. ‘The last road to walk,’ he said, ‘lies on the other side of the gate.’
‘So who got mad and kicked it to pieces, Clip?’
‘Of no consequence any more,’ Clip replied, his smile broadening.
‘You have no idea, in other words,’ Udinaas said. ‘Well, if we’re to go through it, let’s stop wasting time. I’ve almost given up hoping that you’ll end up garrotting yourself with that chain. Almost.’
His last comment seemed to startle Clip for some reason.
And all at once Seren Pedac saw that chain with its rings differently, By the Errant! Why did I not see it before? It is a garrotte. Clip is a damned assassin! She snorted. ‘And you claim to be a Mortal Sword! You’re nothing but a murderer, Clip. Yes, Udinaas saw that long ago-which is why you hate him so. He was never fooled by all those weapons you carry. And now, neither am I.’
‘We’re wasting time indeed,’ Clip said, once more seemingly unperturbed, and he turned and approached the huge gate. Silchas Ruin set out after him, and Seren saw that the White Crow had his hands on the grips of his swords.
‘Danger ahead,’ Fear Sengar announced and yes, damn him, he then moved from his position just behind Seren’s right shoulder to directly in front of her. And drew his sword.
Udinaas witnessed all this and grunted dismissively, then half turned and said, ‘Silchas Ruin’s earned his paranoia, Fear. But even that doesn’t mean we’re about to jump into a pit of dragons.’ He then smiled without any humour. ‘Not that dragons live in pits.’
When he walked after the two Tiste Andii, Kettle ran up to take his hand. At first Udinaas reacted as if her touch had burned him, but then his resistance vanished.
Clip reached the threshold, stepped forward and disappeared. A moment later Silchas Ruin did the same.
Neither Udinaas nor Kettle hesitated.
Reaching the same point, Fear Sengar paused and eyed her. ‘What is in your mind, Acquitor?’ he asked.
‘Do you think I might abandon you all, Fear? Watch you step through and, assuming you can’t get back, I just turn round and walk this pointless road-one I probably would never leave? Is that choice left to me?’
‘All choices are left to you, Acquitor.’
‘You too, I would say. Except, of course, for the ones you willingly surrendered.’
